In what one pro-life leader is calling a case of blatant bias, the Advertising Standards Council of Canada (ASC) has censured a pro-life TV commercial for allegedly being “misleading” and “demean[ing] and denigrat[ing to] women”. The ASC Council will penalize the Ontario pro-life organization behind the commercial for refusing to “permanently withdraw or appropriately amend” it.
. . .
Since 2000, Alliance For Life Ontario has run six pro-life campaigns on mainstream television across Ontario that aim at reaching out to women experiencing a crisis pregnancy and at challenging the status quo acceptance of abortion.

This year’s campaign focused on the 3.5 million people missing in Canada since 1969, when abortion was legally permitted. Two commercials ran 500 times each and were viewed by as many as 14 million people.

The campaign appeared to be running smoothly when Jeffs received notice from the ASC of complaints over the pro-life “Milk Carton” commercial.

ASC found the statement '3.5 million missing children, teens and young adults' in contravention of its clause on 'accuracy and clarity'. Also in contravention was the implication that all women regret their abortions. It also ruled that the ad contained 'unacceptable depictions and portrayals'.

You can see both the original and Canadianized version of the ad here.

But it gets worse.

Since Jeffs refused to pull or amend the commercial, as demanded by the ASC, the ASC will now identify Alliance for Life Ontario for offending their guidelines in a public report that will appear on their website.

While Jeffs fears that the ASC’s censorship and vilifying public report will negatively affect her organization’s ability to purchase ad time for its next television campaign, she says that nevertheless she is already pushing ahead with fundraising for the next run of pro-life commercials.

“We’ll be up and running again, and I imagine that I’ll be facing the same battle again,” she said.

Oh noes! Censorship and vilification!

The ASC reports on its investigations here. We'll be keeping an eye out for the upcoming slap to Alliance for Lies.

Congratulations and thanks to all who took the time to let ASC know that ordinary, sane Canadians find lies and denigration unacceptable on our television screens.

2 comments:

What's with these moral crusaders and their eagerness to use lies and manipulation? I bet you none of these fetus fetishists on either side of the border give a sh*t about electoral fraud, torture or tax evasion.

I would like to do an ad about how many women were butchered and murdered by the government and churches before abortion became legal. That would be about as accurate (actually more accurate) than what these ads were stating. And if we did do such an ad (which no media outlet would touch, so how come this did?), they would be SCREAMING persecution.